Page 8 of In the Crease

She shook her head, but her whole face was doing something she wasn’t quite stopping. I got her bag, and we went up the exterior stairs. The boots negotiated the ice with more caution than confidence—she went flat-footed, arms slightly out, very focused—and I was determined not to find her antics endearing and yet I absolutely did.

I unlocked the door and held it open so she could walk in ahead of me. The green fleece, dark jeans, hair still loose from the flight. She moved like someone comfortable in her own body, easy in it, like she walked into strangers’ apartments every day and was perfectly fine about it.

I told my eyes to behave themselves. Stay up.

They took two full seconds to comply, which was two seconds longer than they should have. The view from behind her was doing things to me.

She read the apartment the way she’d read the landscape from the truck. Seeming to be fully in it, not just scanning. Her eyes moved across Griffin’s half first—gear bag on the floor, shoes with no system, the coaching manual cracked from actual use—then mine. Books shelved by subject. Film notebooks with their edges touching. The throw on the couch folded.

She didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Griffin’s is the half that looks like a storm moved through it,” I said.

“I figured.” She set her tote on a kitchen chair. “Which room is his?”

I pointed. She took her bag down the hall. I heard the door open, the pause, then she came back.

“He has a truly extraordinary number of shampoos.”

“Seven. The small one is behind the conditioner.”

She looked at me. “You’ve counted them.”

“It came up. Long story.”

A small smile. “Could I use your bathroom? I want to fix my hair and freshen up before dinner, and Griffin’s is a little…”

She didn’t need to finish. “Second door.” I got a towel from the linen closet, left it on the bathroom counter, went back to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and stood at the window looking at the parking lot going gray. “Would you like some tea? Probably help keep you warm,” I asked.

“I’d love some. I’ll grab it when I’m all done. I have time, right?”

“You have plenty of time. We’re on your schedule. Whatever you need.” And boy, did I mean it. Anything she wanted, I’d give her.

I made tea I didn’t want. The kettle boiled. I poured it. The radiator knocked. Through the wall I could hear the hair dryer, a low steady hum, and I stood at the window and thought about my call with Audrey and the defensive pair on Tuesday’s opponent and the dozen or so games left in the season and absolutely nothing else at all.

Not the fact that she was fifteen feet away in my bathroom.

Not the way she’d pulled my sister’s moose hat on without checking a mirror, like it hadn’t occurred to her to be self-conscious about it. That was just. No. I stopped myself.

She came out fifteen minutes later with her hair down, dark and loose past her shoulders, and she’d done something to her eyes that made them land harder than they already did. I clocked this for exactly one second—one—and looked at the counter with very great concentration.

“Your bathroom is very organized,” she said.

“Yeah, a bit more than Griffin’s.”

“Griffin’s is a crime scene,” she agreed.

She found the mug of tea I’d made her and came to stand on the other side of the counter, both hands wrapped around it. She looked out the window at the parking lot, and I clocked her movements. She was taking up more space in my head than I’d given her permission to.

She was Griffin’s sister. I wasn’t going to do anything about it.

“Tell me about tomorrow,” she said.

So I told her. Jensen’s pond, forty minutes out, good ice all season because the cold had kept the ice damn near perfect. Pickup game, fire on the bank, coolers when the game wound down. Most of the team showed on the good weekends.

“You love it,” she said when I finished. Not a question.

“Yeah. I do.”